E-Bikes & Bikes Customised to You
Dustin Gyger
Updated On: September 14, 2023
Okay. Now that Pete's explained some of the display settings, I'll just walk you through a couple of other things up here on the handlebars. One quick thing is you have your horn right here. The other thing is to turn. So this is now walking mode. So if you have to go up a big hill and push the trike, you can hold the down button. Now we're on flat ground, so it's going to be quite powerful, but you hold that down and it's going to move with you. Now that's one option for walking mode. The other option, quite honestly, is just to push this very lightly. Oh, sorry, we're zero here. So push that very lightly and you can walk with the trike.
Now if you hold the up button down, this is going to turn your lights on. So you'll see this symbol right here. And if you take a look here at the front headlight, although it's very bright out here, you'll see that turn. All right, and now we can just hold the down button right here to turn that off. And you can see it switches off right here. And you have your horn right here. I think that's important, especially with this size of an e-bike when you're coming up on people. You have a bell right here. Go ahead and use that. Now one other feature as well is the parking brake, which you may need when you're leaving this on a slight incline or even just parking it somewhere. Now the parking brake is right here. It's this little lever here. And what you do to engage it is you just pull the lever and then push this down like so and that keeps the grip or the brake down. So that's your parking brake. Now the bike can't move and disengage, just pull down and this pops up.
So to operate the seatbelt, it's pretty self-explanatory. You just plug it in and you just pull this back like that. And then you would slide this. And to loosen, just pull out like so. And now coming to the back here, you have your basket underneath here and you just loosen this latch and this comes down. Put anything you need in there on your rides and this easily comes back up and you just lock that back into place, clamp that down and you have your ride. Now the rear taillight is engaged when you hit the brakes. So pull the brakes and the tail light will engage and light up. And that's the full tour of what you need to know to be operational and up and riding. Let's take you through for a little test ride and I'll show you how I steer and navigate on the e-rickshaw.
I'm going to go ahead and push the throttle. You can see I'm engaging the throttle and you can see my wattage output of the motors displaying my miles per hour and our assistance level. And go ahead and speed up a little bit. All right, now a few things about steering the rickshaw and driving the rickshaw and driving a tricycle if you've never done it. The weight distribution and how you turn, and you can just shoot up here now. There we go. So when you're on flat ground, it's pretty easy. It's a little bit different on a tricycle in that on a two-wheel bike you're going to be doing more leaning, but on a tricycle, you have to do steering. So I'm not leaning to get the bike to steer, I'm turning the handlebar. So I think that's important. If we make a U-turn right here, you need to turn the handlebars and trust that the bike will stay balanced on a two-wheel bike. You lean into it and you do steer the wheels, but it's a little bit less of a turn.
On a tricycle, you have those two wheels in the back and it's going to balance. So the other thing too is a lot of people get on and they always feel like the bike is pulling them in a certain direction. Now again, with the two wheels in the back, sometimes the bike needs to be steered. On a two-wheel bike, it's more balancing on a trike, you need to steer a little bit. Now, once you get the hang of it, you'll be doing it unconsciously, and just know that there is an adjustment period to getting used to a tricycle. If you've never been on an adult tricycle in your adult life and you've never steered something, it can feel different. But it's not the trike, it's just the fact that riding a two-wheel bike is so much different, and a lot of riders' brains become programmed to operate a two-wheel bike. But a three-wheel bike is much different.
So just remember, it's less about your body weight shifting to steer, and more about the actual act of turning the bars like this. And now you make your circle, and you just have to learn to trust the tricycle so that it will stay balanced. Now a couple of other things. You never want to ride horizontally across a very steep incline. So if this was an incline straight ahead of us, you never want to come straight across it like this on a tricycle, because you have a risk of tipping. On a two-wheel bike, it's going to find that balance point, so you can do that. Going up and downhill should be no problem. Now if you're taking turns at a very high speed, which you should never do on a tricycle, but as you start to turn this way, the bike could, the wheels could come off the ground. So you want to lean into the turn just like this.
And honestly, this is a pretty well-balanced electric trike, because of the four-inch wide tires. So in most situations, you won't even need to do this. But if you want to feel safe, just lean into it, keep all the wheels down and you'll be riding no problem. As you get more and more comfortable, you're going to start to naturally just lean with the turns like you would on your two-wheel bike. So again, if you've never ridden an electric trike as an adult, it's a whole relearning period, just like when you learn to ride a two-wheel bike. I think there's an expectation for people that when they get on an electric tricycle or a tricycle of any sort, they should be able to do it. And you will be able to stay balanced, but the nuances of steering, and turning, and going up hills feel different and take a little getting used to and it will happen. Just do some test riding, get out for rides, and over time, I promise you, you'll start to feel more and more comfortable very quickly.
One thing I'll just say too with braking is your left brake is your front brake, and your right brake is your rear brake and you've got two rear brakes. So if you're going to pull one singular brake, use your rear brake because you got two disc brakes back there. Or you can engage all brakes at the same time. So it's important if you're going at very fast speeds, don't just use the front brake, either use the rear brakes or use all three brakes together. Again, if you pull the front brake too heavily, there's always that risk that maybe you could go over the handlebars, although you'd have to be going very fast on a trike, especially for that to be the case. But it's just important, especially if you have a load on the back, to try to use all three brakes at the same time. That'll be the best option to give you the most braking power or the rear by itself. And there we have it.
Now we're just going to walk through how to use the pedal assist and the shifting of the gears a little bit. So I'm in level three right now, so I'm going to go ahead and start pedaling, and then once we turn the gears around, the pedal assist will kick in. All right, there we go. All right, so now we are doing pedal assist. All right, and we're going to come over here. All right, now we get some flats, I'm going to shift this down a little bit. Okay, so you can see right now I'm going to put this down into first gear. It gets easier for me to pedal in the lower gears. Now in the lower gears, if you start to get the speeds up higher, if you start to go fast, you're going to need to start shifting up. And I can push my trigger shift. Now my pedaling will match the assistance level much better so I'm not over-pedaling or under-pedaling.
And then [inaudible 00:09:51] slow down and you start to go slower, you'll want to shift down here if you're using pedal assist. And now, if I have this in five, I'm getting maximum assistance, I'm going to want to start to shift up, match my pedaling to the assistance, and then as I shift down, I want to shift down here. Also, a little recommendation, don't pedal into the turn just pedal when you come out of the turns on the trike to help maintain your balance. All right, now I'm going to go ahead and turn the motor off completely. So now it's in zero and I have it in third gear. I can shift this down to first, which is going to make it even easier to pedal, or I can now move up a little bit. Second, right now with one passenger on the back, this feels okay.
Now keep in mind with the 24-inch four-inch wheels, it is challenging to pedal, especially if you have a passenger on the back. So we've got a little incline here. Go ahead and put this in first, but you can do it. All right, get a little assistance now. Go ahead and put it into level two. There we go, that makes it much easier. And we're off and running. So there you have it using the brakes. And then I don't know if you can see as well, but on the gears, I use my thumb for everything right here. And coming over to the other side, if you see on the pedal assist side, I like to use my pointer finger. You can use your thumb too to do the up and down. That works as well. Sometimes I could use my pointer finger for the top and my thumb for the bottom. Honestly, whatever is most comfortable for you, you'll figure it out as you start to ride more and more.
All right, there you have it. Coming in for a landing here. All right, so that's a tour of how to operate and ride the e-rickshaw from Sixthreezero. If you have any other questions at all, please comment below or reach out to us, at theteam@sixthreezero.com. Or you can call us at (310) 982-2877. In addition to that, this product will be linked in our bio. So if you don't have one already, you can find it on our website, sixthreezero.com. And we have a 30-day test drive on your e-bike. If you don't love it in 30 days, you can send it back, no questions asked, no money out of your pocket, and we'll have a full one-year warranty on everything related to the bike to make sure you can be up and riding with no problems. Now lastly, you can also join our Facebook pedalers group and you can see other people already posting about their e-rickshaws in the group.
If you want to ask them questions about how they use their rickshaw, different things that they've done because now there's a community of people that have added certain elements. They put their dogs back here, their children, they've added some harnesses. So there's a lot you can do. So go ahead and check out the pedalers group, and talk to existing riders. If you have one, you can bounce ideas off each other and find out some tips and tricks that'll work great for you. So thanks for sticking around and don't forget, it's your journey, your experience. Enjoy the ride.